How Nonprofits Can Identify and Steward Mid-Level Donors
Your nonprofit relies on a regular influx of donations to meet your annual goals and support your organization’s mission. While major donations are often the first to catch your eye and may seem the most impactful, it’s equally important to consider the value of mid-level donations.
Mid-level donations, which typically fall in the range of $500 to $10,000, are a consistent and stable source of funding to power your operations. Because mid-level donations play an essential role in your nonprofit’s fundraising strategy, cultivating and stewarding strong mid-level donor relationships is vital.
With a solid technology foundation and plan, your nonprofit can develop a robust mid-level giving program and ensure your organization’s long-term stability. In this guide, we’ll cover:
- Strategies to Identify Mid-Level Donors
- Strategies to Connect With Mid-Level Donors
- Essential Tools to Grow Mid-Level Donor Relationships
As you read through this article, consider how you can frame these mid-level donor strategies to your nonprofit’s unique audience. This way, you can carefully tailor donation appeals and donor recognition activities to your mid-level donors’ involvement, preferences, and interests in your organization. Let’s begin.
Strategies to Identify Mid-Level Donors
Your nonprofit may be wondering who your mid-level donors are. After all, each organization, depending on its size and scale, will have a different method for measuring who is considered a mid-level donor. Let’s take a closer look at the ways your organization can identify your mid-level donors to optimize your mid-level giving program:
Leverage your CRM to pinpoint mid-level donors.
Use your CRM to take a deep dive into donors’ giving histories and look at the average amounts they’ve given to your organization. This will help you identify donors that fit in the mid-level category so you can focus your outreach on them. This will also help you find donors who have the capacity and willingness to increase their donations to the mid-level threshold.
If you’re looking for a way to maximize your donor data and take your fundraising tech to the next level, consider investing in a solution that has native integration with your CRM like Salesforce.
Jackson River’s guide to Salesforce donation apps recommends looking for a tool that leverages donor insights to automate donation appeals, recurring giving requests, and more so your team can save time and streamline your fundraising strategy.
Consider your recurring donors
People who donate on a recurring basis already have a strong interest in your organization, making them prime candidates for mid-level donations. Explore donors with a history of consistent giving to your organization and assess whether they would be likely to increase their giving amount.
Assemble a donor communications team
Identifying your mid-level donors is a process that takes time and effort. As a result, you’ll need a dedicated donor communications team ready to initiate and maintain these mid-level donor relationships.
As your organization grows, the way you define mid-level donors may change. Regularly review your breakdown of donor tiers so you have an accurate understanding of who fits into your mid-level donor category.
Strategies to Connect With Mid-Level Donors
Once you’ve identified mid-level donors, you need a way to connect with them and nurture their support. By building a strong foundation for relationships with mid-level donors, you’ll be more likely to retain their support for the long haul, increasing their lifetime value at your organization. This helps establish a reliable donation pipeline to fuel your important work year after year.
Aly Sterling Philanthropy’s guide to donor stewardship recommends using the following stewardship tips:
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- Personalize your outreach. Your communications should be tailored to each mid-level donor’s interests in your organization so you can tap into their specific motivations for giving. Get to know them better by arranging meetings, and follow up regularly using their preferred contact method.
- Express appreciation. Thank mid-level donors each time they give and communicate the impact of their gifts. For example, highlight the specific program they helped fund or even offer a tour of your updated facilities if they contributed to renovations.
- Offer ways to give feedback. Your mid-level donors have a vested interest in your cause and want to see your mission grow. To help mid-level donors feel even more valued, allow them to voice their feedback through surveys or in your meetings.
- Invite mid-level donors to volunteer. Volunteering can help mid-level donors see first-hand the impact their contributions have and feel more connected to your organization and its community. If your mid-level donors are interested in a particular program or service your nonprofit offers, invite them to volunteer at the next activity.
Remember to extend your communications beyond donation appeals to avoid donor burnout and demonstrate to mid-level donors that you truly appreciate their ongoing support. You can do this by letting them know how much your latest fundraiser earned, sharing updates on your recent project, or just checking in with them on birthdays and other special events.
Essential Tools to Grow Mid-Level Donor Relationships
To make relationship building as easy as possible, you’ll need to leverage a robust fundraising solution. Look for software with the following key features to turn casual mid-level donors into avid supporters:
- Targeted communications and appeals. It can be challenging to pinpoint the right time to ask supporters to increase the amount that they donate and the frequency at which they give. With the right fundraising solution, you can use data intelligence and automation to power off requests exactly when your supporters are most likely to convert their one-time gifts into recurring donations.
- Data tracking. Look for a solution that offers source code tracking, analytics, and custom tags to annual and capital campaigns, giving your organization real-time insights into donor behavior and habits.
- Reporting and analytics. As you launch fundraising campaigns, you should immediately take the time to reflect on whether you met your goals and how you can hone your strategy. Your fundraising platform should automatically create data reports so you can assess your fundraising progress and send off donation requests tailored to your mid-level donors.
- Donor portal. For each of your nonprofit’s supporters, your software should generate custom donor portals where donors can update their payment amount or method, sign up for recurring giving, and complete additional actions with ease.
- Integration with your CRM. Rather than working with multiple, siloed tools that can lead to a disruption in your flow of data, leverage a fundraising solution that readily integrates with your CRM like Salesforce. This way, you’ll always have an up-to-date view into your donors’ behavior and your nonprofit’s fundraising performance.
If your nonprofit will also be engaging in advocacy, it can be helpful to invest in a fundraising platform that
doubles as advocacy software. An advocacy and fundraising-focused solution can help you motivate mid-level donors to easily sign petitions, send messages to politicians, and take part in various advocacy activities to push forward your campaigns and ignite change.
To establish a consistent donation pipeline, your nonprofit needs to make mid-level donors a primary focus of its fundraising strategy. Work with your team to augment your cultivation and stewardship strategy and be sure to invest in the right fundraising tech. This will help you build strong mid-level donor relationships over time, allowing you to advance your mission and deepen your nonprofit’s impact.
About the Author
Shannon Scanlan
Shannon Scanlan is the Solutions Engineer at
Jackson River. Shannon has been helping nonprofits grow their digital and direct marketing programs and use technology to reach new audiences, raise more, and improve efficiency for over 17 years, working for organizations such as the ACLU, The Clinton Foundation, and The Metropolitan of Art among many others. She’s been working at Jackson River for the past 5 years, working with clients implement the Springboard platform, a digital-first online fundraising and engagement platforms that helps nonprofits catalyze support for their cause.
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